Android UI Design

Plan, design, and build engaging user interfaces for your Android applications

About This Book

• Take an initial idea for an Android app and develop it into a detailed plan, supported by sketches and wireframes
• Provide a better experience for your users by following best practices and the new material design principles
• Work more efficiently and save time by testing your ideas at an early stage by building a prototype

Who This Book Is For

If you are a Java developer with a keen interest in building stunning UIs for your applications in order to retain customers and create great experiences for them, then this book is for you. A good knowledge level of HTML, CSS, and some grounding in Android Development is assumed.

What You Will Learn

• Develop a user interface that adheres to all the core material design principles
• Transform your initial app idea into a concrete and detailed plan
• Add Views, ViewGroups, layouts, and common UI components to your own Android projects
• Use fragments and various strategies to gather user input
• Create a new Android Studio project and develop it into a prototype
• Identify and solve problems with your app's UI to deliver a better user experience
• Start getting to grips with the new UI features coming up in Android N, including multi-window mode and direct reply notifications

In Detail

Great design is one of the key drivers in the adoption of new applications, yet unfortunately design considerations are often neglected in the face of “will it work,” “can we make it quicker,” or “can we get more people using it”?

This book seeks to redress this balance by showing you how to get your PM to start treating the design phase of your project seriously. This book is focused entirely on the development of UI features, and you'll be able to practically implementing the design practices that we extol throughout the book.

Starting by briefly outlining some of the factors you need to keep in mind when building a UI, you'll learn the concepts of Android User Interface from scratch. We then move on to formulate a plan on how to implement these concepts in various applications. We will deep dive into how UI features are implemented in real-world applications where UIs are complex and dynamic.

This book offers near complete coverage of UI-specific content including, views, fragments, the wireframing process, and how to add in splash screens—everything you need to make professional standard UIs for modern applications. It will then cover material design and show you how to implement Google's design aesthetic in a practical manner. Finally, it ensures the best possible user experience by analyzing the UI using various tools, and then addressing any problems they uncover.

By the end of the book, you'll be able to leverage the concepts of Android User Interface in your applications in order to attract new customers.

Style and approach

This book follows a comprehensive approach that focuses on the concepts of UI from scratch. The book ends with teaching Android developers on how to optimize their UI, best practices and securing applications.